Poetry of Issue #8        Page 63

PROBLEM
próblema (from pro-ballesthai): protrusion, salience, project, foothills, bulwark, what is held or put before one, point at issue
--For Sanja L--

I am where i am not, & i am where i
Literally do not want to be & yet
Find no better place to be. This
Protracted instant in which i am held
Protruded projected thrown before one, myself.
A galley slave smoothing his rowing bench
In memory of what was then, a salience,
A bulwark. This is here, this is now.
You are history.

I need a spy-glass to see the liberated festive
Zones, floating worlds of woodcuts & songs,
The magic ships trod by puppets quite like ourselves
Who may meet what they awaited & do not turn
Into brittle cancerous glass, for they're puppets
Our superior shadows, cast by the burning bush
In the clear desert of the boards that mean life,
Held or put before us, in the foothills,
Touched by tongues of fire. O their arrow-ships!

He has a problem, said the voice
He got the spyglass he wanted.
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Darko R. Suvin